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By Ashwin Kumar
PETALING JAYA, Jan 22 — To differentiate between genuine news and hoaxes, the media mainstream organisations must strive towards quality journalism in order to build the public's trust.
Australia-based Southeast Asia region media expert Ross Tapsell said failing to produce calibre-level journalism would eventually lead readers to seek alternative sources of information.
He said that although it could be a difficult challenge for the Malaysian media industry, producing high-quality journalism is the only way to ensure the public to rely on credible news outlets.
Citing Australia’s recent deadly bushfire as an example, Taspell said people had turned to the country’s public broadcaster, ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) News for the latest updates on the disaster.
"When people are relying on reliable news, they turn to the public broadcaster to see what’s happening in their community.
"That’s such an important part of a media landscape to have a quality public broadcaster and that is certainly something Malaysia could work towards as well," the senior lecturer and researcher at the Australian National University's College of Asia and the Pacific said.
Tapsell was the main speaker at the ‘Building Malaysia’s Resistance Against Fake News: Diagnosis and Antidote’ seminar on January 18, which was jointly organised by international grassroots journalism organisation Hacks Hackers Kuala Lumpur chapter and independent pollster Merdeka Centre with support from Google Malaysia.
Rather than considering the developments of rising disinformation as the "weaponisation of the internet", Taspell considered disinformation as an amplification of long-standing information-sharing through technological channels.
He noted the tendency for older people to be more open to "hoax news," indicating the danger of overstating the transformative nature of the internet on people’s attitudes and behaviours.
He also observed that people could succumb to disinformation campaigns regardless of their level of education or degree of internet access.
Stopping Misinformation
Tapsell commended the Federal government’s move to abolish the Anti-Fake News Act, a law criminalising fake news legislation that was passed by the previous Barisan Nasional (BN) government.
He said the terms of the law were very vague as to how fake news was defined, which means it could have been politicised
He had outlined several suggestions on how the government could stop the spread of fake news other than formulating and enforcing draconian laws
This includes improving and increasing internet connection especially in rural and semi-rural areas as millions among Southeast Asia’s population were "literally sitting on the digital divide bridge".
"People in these regions are merely using the internet to browse Facebook and to check their messenger Apps since they don't get fast connection and that is the reason I feel some of the fact-checking method suggested will never work in Malaysia due to the nature of internet users in the country.
"When people in rural areas get access to increasing internet speed and access, the more people are exposed to a wider range of information," he said, adding that people necessarily google to fact-check information received.
He also urged the Malaysian government to play an aggressive role in crippling syndicates that produce disinformation by hiring cyber troopers.
"It is important to go after these people than specifically targeting individuals who sometimes don't even know that they were spreading fake news and they don't really mean to cause offence," he added.
He said that the creation of disinformation has been increasingly "amateurised", involving not only public relations professionals, but also university students.
